Reddit reviews Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

this is a good book about working with the Thoth tarot

You might consider Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot by Lon Milo DuQuette.

Edit: formatting

If you really want to dig into this buy a Thoth Tarot deck, Crowley's book, and probably also Duquette's book to give you a good primer on Crowley.

Modern Tarot decks are visual representations of the Tree Of Life because almost all modern decks are based on either the Rider-Waite-Smith deck or the Thoth Deck. Waite and Crowley were members of the Hermetic Order Of The Golden Dawn which used the tarot as a tool for learning Kaballah(among other things). I'm suggesting the Thoth because it's better in almost every way and you will really appreciate the artwork. The small cards are the sephiroths (ace=kether, 2=chokmah... 10=malkuth, the suit of wands represents the tree of life in the kabbalistic world of atziluth(the classical element fire and the first Yod in the Tetragrammaton) etc...) and the major arcana represent the 22 paths between the sephiroths(Atu 0 The Fool connects Kether and Chokhmah, Atu 1 The Magus connect Kether and Binah, etc...). Here is some of the artwork The Magus, The Universe, The Ace Of Cups. The cards will give you more to meditate on then you could possibly get through in a single lifetime.

Also Malkuth means Kingdom and is related to the physical world. The Knowledge and Conversation Of The Holy Guardian Angel is attributed Tipheret.

I'm glad to see some conversation about the occult on here. I don't think anyone would argue that all occult and mystical practices arise from the type of shamanism the people in this forum practice. The two types of approaches go great together whether you are into Kabballah, Buddhism, Daoism, or any other system.

The Tree Of Life is just a map created by people who have been there before. It might be fun to just storm off into the wilderness without knowing where you are going, but your chances of finding something interesting will increase greatly with the help. I've had great luck performing a little ritual where I get into a trance, take a hit of hash, invoke one of the cards, and experience it's energy. It's much more powerful than just taking a drug to see what will happen and all kinds of interesting synchronicities will start appearing in your life.

Good luck! If you have any questions I can try to answer them.

Personally speaking, I use the Crowley Thoth deck. You are probably on the right track in regards to dumping the R-W deck for this colossus of Tarot. It is a bit intimidating to get all the symbols and their meanings in the Thoth deck but hang in there. Should you need any help along the way, there is this book-
http://www.amazon.ca/Understanding-Aleister-Crowleys-Thoth-Tarot/dp/1578632765
As well as other resources. So far as how it all relates, I think it relates somewhat nicely. There is still debate as to how the Tarot Cards got lumped together with the Tree of Life, but I'm not going to get into that. For me, I found the relation to the Paths a very helpful one. The meanings/relationship to the Tree of Life and the elements, from the Tarot are yours to interpret, yours to discover and make your own. This is what is both maddening and wonderful about the Tarot. In many ways, it's rudderless nature allows for the person working with it to make up the story for themselves And there's the beauty! No need to worry about forcing meaning when it is not relevant. If it feels relevant to you, meaningful to you, go for it. That's magic.
I'll give a quick example. To me, Tiphereth/Beauty is the highest human point on the Tree of life. Before that we have Netzach/Victory. Connecting the two is path 24 Death- which for all intents and purposes is Change. How do I connect these? Again, to me Netzach is a highly emotional Sephiroth, it's chief gods being that of Love- Venus, Aphrodite, etc. Love prompts one to feel a great deal of emotions, some good and some bad and some very very bad. This is why I equate it to this Sephiroth, among other reasons. Alright, so this isn't a short example but bear with me. So, how does one get to the higher Sephiroth Tiphereth? Death. Change. Killing those lower base things within us that hold us back. All the petty emotions; the ones that sully the name of love. Cut 'em down. Conquer your emotions, claim Victory over them. Then, one can get to a place of greater understanding; A place of Beauty- Tiphereth. Crowley, when writing about this card put it this way- 'The Universe is Change; every Change is the effect of an Act of Love; all Acts of Love contain Pure Joy. Die daily!'
To me, this makes sense. It carries meaning.
Hope this helps.

I completely agree with your comment.

The Thoth tarot is wonderfully deep, if you are also interested in studying the occult symbology.

If you prefer a gentler approach to learning, then other decks - especially R/W are a good starting point.

I only came to love the Thoth deck after using RW for tarot for several years, and, in addition, studying occult disciplines. And I read The Book of Thoth before I read "Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot"

Rider-Waite is a fantastic learning tarot, and far, far more powerful as a teaching deck than most others on the market today IMHO.

This is my favorite book on the Major Arcana.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fools-Pilgrimage-Kabbalistic-Meditations/dp/0835608395

I think the author is Donald Tyson, but Portable Magic is a great book on constructing rituals for tarot.

As for learning card meanings almost any is fine to get yourself started. I usually recommend starting with whatever your local library has on it instead of spending money or searching for a .pdf.

However if you get a Thoth Deck this is the most reccomended book on it.

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Aleister-Crowleys-Thoth-Tarot/dp/1578632765

Crowley's Book of Thoth is also available online for free as it's now public domain. There's also an excellent thoth book by Don Milo that's almost required reading if you're into Crowley mysticism as it relates to the Thoth tarot: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Aleister-Crowleys-Thoth-Tarot/dp/1578632765

I'd recommend getting the large format Thoth deck, there's a ton of tiny detail that kind of gets lost in the smaller reprints.


That said, the Rider-Waite deck comes from the same Hermetic tradition and has much of the same symbolism. The imagery is a little less... dense? Surreal? and a bit easier to relate to at first (plus all the pip cards are illustrated, making the minor arcana easier to learn). There are also a bunch of excellent resources for the RW since its sort of the "default" deck.

Some years ago I read Lon Milo Duquette's book on the Thoth deck

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Aleister-Crowleys-Thoth-Tarot/dp/1578632765

and came away with the impression the king/queen/knight/page sequence is a matter of emphasizing, respectively, the fire/water/air/earth aspects of the particular suit energy. I read these as a matter of enacting or embodying these aspects, and I have (almost) completely gotten away from identifying, say, queen wands as a particular individual, but usually as an aspect of the querent, or a role she is undertaking.

Which I guess also means I am largely disregarding imagery, but that was sort of baked into my early experiences with a "dark" deck in which some of the imagery was literally so dark as to be almost indecipherable. These days I mostly read with playing cards.

Please, please, don't take this the wrong way or be offended, but reading this made me extremely sad -- especially the part about giving up and moving to chaos theory instead.

If you want to understand the basics of the structure of the Tarot and learn some simple rituals, then I would strongly suggest this book and deck by the Ciceros.

Without a firm grasp of the basic Tarot, I feel that Crowley's Thoth deck and book will be too confusing. If you insist on learning the Thoth before the basic Tarot, then I would suggest supplementing Crowley's text with this book by Duquette.

Please don't give up... just study a lot more theory! Good luck!

P.S. PM me if you'd like and I can point you copies of these books online.

EDIT: You may also be interested in this other book by the Ciceros. I have a copy but I've only flipped through it. Don't let the cover or title turn you off. Check out the Table of Contents and you'll see it hits a lot of important topics and provides a lot of example rituals.

I'm using these to learn

Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot:

https://www.amazon.ca/Understanding-Aleister-Crowleys-Thoth-Tarot/dp/1578632765

Book of Thoth

https://www.amazon.ca/Book-Thoth-Egyptian-Tarot/dp/0877282684/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CWZHPFQA9ETTKABGTTGP

I recommend reading books. There are a zillion books about the Waite-Smith deck. For the Thoth deck, this book is a must read.

Edit to add: This series was very helpful to me. The "Tarot Reversals" one by Mary K. Greer is the bomb.

Not entirely sure if this is what you're looking for, but, there's a handful of books that people have written that attempt to explore the symbolism and meaning of Crowley's deck.

A friend of mine, a member of the local OTO Lodge and EGC, has several. I know these two are in his library for sure:

- Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot
- The Thoth Companion

There's also the old stand-by, Crowley's own exploration and essay about the deck:

- The Book of Thoth

Apologies if these aren't what you're looking for, and I hope someone comes along that can answer your questions more satisfactorily.

Check out [this book](Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot https://www.amazon.com/dp/1578632765/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_RnwAyb7JQ3T1Q) instead. It's basically The Book of Thoth rewritten to be more easily understood. Liber Theta is also available for free as an online resource.

Honestly, you don't need to feel connected to your deck immediately. That connection sometimes doesn't develop until you've been using it for a while and have really gotten to know it. I'd suggest continuing to study with your Thoth deck while you research other Thoth based decks until you find one you like. Tabula Mundi is my personal favorite.